Thursday, October 13, 2016

Browns, Magentas and Blues!

I've spent the last week and a half experimenting with natural dyeing. First I made up a dye bath with some of the MANY walnuts on the ground here. The resulting skeins dyed brown have a wonderful depth and glow to them that pictures just don't do justice to.
Next up was picking some of the pokeweed berries growing everywhere here. The first dips into the dye bath gave a deep magenta. I still had the walnut dyebath so I did some lighter dyeing in the pokeweed bath then let the yarn sit in the walnut dye bath. I also played around with some mottling of the pokeweed and walnut on some of Elwood's roving.

Yesterday I played in the indigo vat. What fun! I am in love with this blue. I haven't decided it I want to make some of the skeins a darker, deeper blue.

I was hoping to get some mordanting done this morning and then spend the afternoon making up dyebaths with jewelweed and madder root, but we've been having off and on showers. I need a little yellow/red spectrum in the mix.